This is a beautiful passage from Lewis’ Prince Caspian. I often feel the little throb of happiness when Lucy recognises Aslan and runs in and snuggles with him. You live for those moments!
So before I say more clumsy things, here is Lewis in his immensely more beautiful style…
Lucy woke out of the deepest sleep you can imagine, with the feelingthat the voice she liked best in the world had been calling her name. She thought at first it was her father’s voice, but that did not seem quite right. Then she thought it was Peter’s voice, but that did not seem to fit either. She did not want to get up; not because she was still tired – on the contrary she was wonderfully rested and all theaches had gone from her bones – but because she felt so extremely happy and comfortable…
“Lucy,” came the call again, neither her father’s voice nor Peter’s.She sat up, trembling with excitement but not with fear. The moon was so bright that the whole forest landscape around her was almost asclear as day, though it looked wilder.
She got up, her heart beating wildly, and walked towards them…
Lucy felt there was a tune in it, but she could not catch the tune any more than she had been able to catch the words… But there was, at least, a lilt; she felt her own feet wanting to dance as she got nearer. And now there was no doubt that the trees were really moving moving in and out through one another as if in a complicated country dance.
…
“They are almost awake, not quite,” said Lucy. She knew she herself was wide awake, wider than anyone usually is.
She went fearlessly in among them, dancing herself as she leaped this way and that to avoid being run into by these huge partners. But she was only half interested in them. She wanted to get beyond them to something else; it was from beyond them that the dear voice hadcalled.She soon got through them (half wondering whether she had been usingher arms to push branches aside, or to take hands in a Great Chain with big dancers who stooped to reach her) for they were really a ring of trees round a central open place. She stepped out from among their shifting confusion of lovely lights and shadows.
A circle of grass, smooth as a lawn, met her eyes, with dark trees dancing all round it. And then – oh joy! For he was there: the huge Lion, shining white in the moonlight, with his huge black shadow underneath him.
But for the movement of his tail he might have been a stone lion, butLucy never thought of that. She never stopped to think whether he was a friendly lion or not. She rushed to him. She felt her heart would burst if she lost a moment. And the next thing she knew was that shewas kissing him and putting her arms as far round his neck as she could and burying her face in the beautiful rich silkiness of his mane.
“Aslan, Aslan. Dear Aslan,” sobbed Lucy. “At last.”
The great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath came all round her.She gazed up into the large wise face.
“Welcome, child,” he said.
“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”
“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.
eccedominus 